The question: How will Kathryn Steinle’s death push us forward?

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JULY 06: A well-wisher drops off flowers at the site where 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle was killed on July 6, 2015 in San Francisco, California. According to police, Steinle was shot and killed by Francisco Sanchez as she walked with her father on San Francisco's Pier 14 on July 1. Sanchez had been previously deported five times. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) less

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JULY 06: A well-wisher drops off flowers at the site where 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle was killed on July 6, 2015 in San Francisco, California. According to police, Steinle was shot and ... more

Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

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SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JULY 06: A well-wisher drops off flowers at the site where 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle was killed on July 6, 2015 in San Francisco, California. According to police, Steinle was shot and killed by Francisco Sanchez as she walked with her father on San Francisco's Pier 14 on July 1. Sanchez had been previously deported five times. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) less

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JULY 06: A well-wisher drops off flowers at the site where 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle was killed on July 6, 2015 in San Francisco, California. According to police, Steinle was shot and ... more

Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

The question: How will Kathryn Steinle’s death push us forward?

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When it was announced that the parents of Kathryn Steinle, the woman fatally shot on the Embarcadero on July 1, were going to appear on Bill O’Reilly’s national news show Monday night, it was hard to imagine what they were going to say.

And it didn’t go the way anyone expected.

Jim Steinle and Liz Sullivan are understandably lost in grief. But the Pleasanton couple didn’t say we need to tighten the borders or crack down on immigrants who are here illegally. They slipped into Fox News-speak a couple of times, saying “illegal aliens,” a jarring term that has long passed, like “colored people,” into the realm of pejorative.

But what they wanted, like any parent, is that their daughter, Kate, be remembered — that the vivacious 32-year-old woman might have a legacy. That’s natural and understandable, and they came across as sad and shattered but strong.

And I suppose it is also to be expected that Fox and O’Reilly used the moment as a political wedge for a larger agenda of complaints about lax immigration policy, spineless government and lack of action.

They would, O’Reilly said, propose “Kate’s Law,” a measure that would set up a mandatory penalty of five years in prison for any deported felon who returned to the United States. O’Reilly stressed more than once that the penalty would be “mandatory,” so there would be no well-intentioned backtracking by liberals.

The idea, made up in a TV studio, is a Fox fantasy that plays perfectly to the idea that there’s an easy fix for all these matters if we’d just stop with all the sympathy and violins and show a little good old-fashioned discipline.

But nothing really happens until there’s a face, a person and a tragedy. Taking down the offensive Confederate flag at South Carolina’s State House has been debated for decades. It took the horrific church shootings, and the loss of nine lives, to shine the spotlight so brightly that the flag was down in less than a month.

So now that face is Kate Steinle. Her photo is on constant replay on CNN, Fox is using her image to push its agenda, and national leaders are sure to weigh in.

Which leaves us to reflect on how this all happened. I was out at Pier 14 this weekend. You really have to stand out there to recognize what an unbelievably random event this was. The family wasn’t walking on the Embarcadero sidewalk. They were strolling way out on the fishing pier, 100 feet or more into the bay.

I don’t know if we are clear yet on where Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez was standing when he allegedly shot her, but it seems impossible, unless he walked all the way out there, that this was anything but an incredibly random tragedy.

That bullet could have gone anywhere — into the bay or into the sidewalk. Instead, it struck her fatally as she was walking with her father. In a fair and just world, how is that possible?

Maddeningly, Lopez-Sanchez’s explanation of what happened doesn’t make any sense. First, he told a reporter, he shot her; then said he was going to plead not guilty. He said he was shooting at sea lions, then claimed the gun just went off. Although we’re not sure what happened, it looks more and more like a screwball with a gun. But he’s also a much-deported immigrant in this country illegally who has a felony record.

And that’s changed everything. Our editorial page editor, John Diaz, says he was in New York last week and standing in Times Square, watching the famous scrolling news ticker atop a building and saw the words “Pier 14” and “San Francisco” roll by.

There’s no doubting that this is a national story — it’s where it goes from here that will make the difference.

Fox News has its script. O’Reilly says his mythical Kate’s Law will be pushed in Washington. They are looking, he says, for a million signatures on a petition supporting it. And he told Kate’s parents that Fox will fly them to Washington so they can testify before Congress and promote this “legislation.”

And San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, who has done some O’Reilly-like blustering himself, is going to have to confront his stubborn refusal to contact immigration officials who asked to be notified when Lopez-Sanchez was released.

It has ignited a national debate, for better or worse. It may get ugly. Or it may push us to something real, concrete and helpful. Surely someone is going to mention the problem of a country where guns are so plentiful that a confused drifter like Lopez-Sanchez could find one on the street (according to his story) wrapped in a T-shirt.

But we shouldn’t forget where all this all began — with a stroll on a San Francisco pier on a July evening. Most of us didn't know who Kate Steinle was then. Now the entire country does.